Wednesday, November 2, 2016

Last Friday, FBI Director James Comey sent a
letter to congressional leaders stating that the FBI had “learned of the
existence of emails that appear to be pertinent to the investigation” of
Hillary Clinton’s use of a personal email server. With Election Day right around the corner, how
will the new revelation impact the presidential race?

It is important to note that even before the
recent news regarding Clinton’s emails, national polls were already
tightening. According to the Real Clear Politics 4-way national average, Clintons’ lead had been on a decline. On October 18th, Clinton led Trump
46% to 39%, and on the day that the Comey news broke, Clinton’s lead had fallen
to 45% to 41%. As of today, Clinton is hanging
onto a slim 2-point lead (45% to 43%) nationally.

Although it may still be too early to tell, as
of now there are scare data suggesting the recent news regarding Clinton’s
emails has caused voters to rethink their vote preference. A recent national ABC News/ Washington Post poll found 63% of voters nationally saying
the recent news does not affect how likely they are to support Clinton. Recent Monmouth University polls in Indiana, Missouri, and Pennsylvania
draw an even stronger conclusion. Fewer than 5% of voters in each state say
Comey’s letter actually caused them to change their vote choice. Since this
finding includes supporters of both candidates, the net effect of Comey’s
letter is only a net 1 or 2 point gain for Trump. With all the coverage and
talk focusing on Comey’s decision to re-open the investigation, there is little
evidence it has been overwhelmingly detrimental to the Clinton campaign and her
standing in the polls…yet.

Tuesday, October 4, 2016

AMonmouth
University Poll released the morning of the debate suggested that the vast
majority of voters (87%) did not expect to learn anything that would change
their minds based on the first presidential debate. With the majority of voters already set on
their presidential candidate selection, Trump and Clinton have shifted their
attention to gaining the support of undecided voters. Presidential temperament
may be one of the factors that helps sways undecided voters.

The national Monmouth University Poll that came out on debate
day found that nearly 6-in-10 voters believe Hillary Clinton has the right
temperament to sit in the Oval Office, while just 35% feel the same about
Donald Trump’s temperament. AFOX poll
conducted just after the event mirrors pre-debate findings on presidential
temperament stating that 67% of likely voters say Clinton has a presidential
temperament while only 37% say Trump has the temperament to be president.

The most recent Monmouth University Polls in the
battleground states of Colorado and Pennsylvania
appear to be reflective of national views concerning both Clinton’s and Trump’s
temperament. A majority of likely
Colorado (61%) and Pennsylvania (64%) voters feel that Hillary Clinton has the
right temperament to be president.
Meanwhile, only 31% of likely Colorado and Pennsylvania voters feel that
Donald Trump has the temperament to be president. With Election Day just around the corner, the
candidate’s presidential temperament will continue to play a key role in
swaying undecided voters in battleground states.

The latest Politico/Morning
Consult Poll confirms Monmouth’s pre-debate findings, with approximately
8-in-10 voters (81%) stating that the debate did not change their ballot
decision. About 1-in-10 (9%) voters said that the debate has influenced their
selection for president. Nonetheless,
post-debate findings are confirming what pre-debate polls suggested. The first presidential debate reaffirmed many
voters' ballot selection and did little to sway voters' minds.

The number of voters who cannot
bring themselves to voice a favorable opinion of either major party nominee is
unlike anything witnessed in past elections.
Only 2% have a favorable opinion of both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump
while one-third (35%) do not have a favorable opinion of either candidate. These results are unprecedented according to
polling data going back more than 30 years.

The number of voters in elections
going back to 1984 who had a favorable opinion of both candidates was never
lower than 5% – in fact registering as high as 19% in 2000. Conversely, the number of voters who did not
have a favorable opinion of either nominee was never higher than 9% – a
fraction of what is being seen in the current election.

Among
the 1-in-3 voters in the current poll who do not have a favorable opinion of
either nominee, 21% say they have an unfavorable opinion of both candidates, 7%
have an unfavorable view of Clinton while expressing “no opinion” of Trump, and
8% have an unfavorable view of Trump while expressing “no opinion” of Clinton. Even taking into account differences in
question wording and methodology compared to past election polls, the number of
voters who hold negative views of both candidates is indisputably a record
high.

Monmouth combined the data from its
four national polls conducted this summer to get a better sense of these
disapproving voters. Based on this
four-poll average, those with an unfavorable opinion of both nominees are dividing
their support almost evenly among Trump (24%), Clinton (21%), and Johnson
(22%), with Stein at 8%. Among those who
hold a negative view of one nominee and no opinion of the other candidate,
however, the vast majority are voting for the candidate of whom they have no
personal opinion. This includes 77% of
the “unfavorable Clinton/no opinion Trump” group who are voting for Trump and
75% of the “unfavorable Trump/no opinion Clinton” group who are voting for
Clinton.

This is not surprising because the
vast majority of “no opinion on Clinton voters” lean Democrat and the vast
majority of “no opinion on Trump” voters lean Republican. It just seems that they can’t bring themselves
to admitting to a favorable opinion of the person they are grudgingly
supporting.

It’s also worth noting that there
are more Republicans than Democrats among voters who have an unfavorable
opinion of both candidates and this negative group is also much more likely to
be college educated. The demographic
composition of each voter group is below.

Among those who
have an unfavorable opinion of Trump but no opinion of Clinton:

·44%
describe themselves as Democrats and 33% are independents who lean Democrat

·51%
are white, 21% are black, 23% are Hispanic, and 6% are Asian or other race

·42%
are under age 35, 26% are 35-49, 21% are 50-64, and 10% are 65 and older

·41%
are men and 59% are women

·39%
have a college degree

Among those who
have an unfavorable opinion of Clinton but no opinion of Trump:

·45%
describe themselves as Republicans and 29% are independents who lean Republican

·84%
are white, 3% are black, 7% are Hispanic, and 7% are Asian or other race

·23%
are under age 35, 18% are 35-49, 33% are 50-64, and 25% are 65 and older

·58%
are men and 42% are women

·46%
have a college degree

Among those who
have an unfavorable opinion of both Trump and Clinton:

·29%
are Republicans and 21% lean Republican, 13% are Democrats and 20% lean
Democrat, and 18% are self-described independents who do not lean toward either
party.

·80%
are white, 6% are black, 10% are Hispanic, and 4% are Asian or other race

·36%
are under age 35, 24% are 35-49, 26% are 50-64, and 15% are 65 and older

·54%
are men and 46% are women

·56%
have a college degree

It’s also worth
noting that nearly 1-in-4 of those voters who do not have a favorable opinion
of either candidate are considered to be unlikely to turn out to vote this
November. This compares to less than
1-in-10 with a favorable opinion of one of the candidates who are considered to
be unlikely voters.

For the record,
among those who have a favorable opinion of Clinton only:

·72%
describe themselves as Democrats and 19% are independents who lean Democrat

·58%
are white, 24% are black, 12% are Hispanic, and 5% are Asian or other race

·22%
are under age 35, 26% are 35-49, 28% are 50-64, and 24% are 65 and older

·35%
are men and 65% are women

·53%
have a college degree

·93%
are voting for Clinton

Among those who
have a favorable opinion of Trump only:

·62%
describe themselves as Republicans and 25% are independents who lean Republican

·89%
are white, 2% are black, 7% are Hispanic, and 2% are Asian or other race

·16%
are under age 35, 27% are 35-49, 31% are 50-64, and 26% are 65 and older

·57%
are men and 43% are women

·42%
have a college degree

·94%
are voting for Trump

Another
historical note: the difference between the two candidates’ favorability
ratings correlates extremely closely with the actual margin of victory. For example, Barack Obama had a 6 point
advantage over Mitt Romney in candidate favorability in 2012 and ended up
winning the popular vote in that election by 4 points. Ronald Reagan had a 17 point favorability
advantage over Walter Mondale in 1984 and won that election by 18 points. Even in the razor thin election of 2000, Al
Gore had a one point favorability edge over George W. Bush and won the national
popular vote by half a percentage point despite losing the Electoral
College. The same is true in 2004 (favor
+5R; vote +3R), 1996 (favor +6D; vote +8D), 1992 (favor +5D; vote +6D), and
1988 (favor +8R; vote +7R). According to
the average of recent polls reported by HuffPost Pollster, Clinton has about a
6 point advantage on this metric.

There
are also intriguing down-ballot implications.
Some pundits point to the 1996 election when the GOP tried to disconnect
the Congressional races from its presidential nominee who was trailing in the
polls. In that year, however, opinion of
Bob Dole was fairly positive, with 50% of voters holding a favorable opinion of
him. This year, the top of ticket
nominees in both party are largely negative, with Trump doing significantly
worse among his fellow Republicans than Clinton is doing among her fellow
Democrats. This suggests that the GOP
could have a bigger problem holding its base in down ballot races where their
nominee is seen as aligned too closely with Trump.

Monday, August 8, 2016

Some commenters have noted that the Democratic advantage in the latest Monmouth University Poll is larger than in our poll taken just prior to the two parties' conventions . Specifically, voters in the current poll self-identify their party leanings as 35% Democrat, 26% Republican, and 39% independent or other. In the July poll it was 33% Democrat, 28% Republican, and 39% independent or other.

Contrary to some misperceptions - largely by those unhappy with the overall results of the latest poll - Monmouth did not "choose" the sample to look this way. Party identification is a self-reported attitude based on where people see themselves fitting in the current political environment.

It is not the same as party registration or partisan voting behavior (e.g. consistently voting in one party's primaries), which is a more stable metric. I wrote about these differences in more detail a few years ago (Party ID Apples and Oranges). While the data in that analysis were drawn from New Jersey voter files and poll samples, the underlying message is the same. Party self-identification can move with the political climate, while party registration is more stable.

Monmouth's 2016 presidential polling uses a combination of voter lists and random digit dialing. The voter list includes data on voter registration and past primary voting. According to this metric, 34% of the Monmouth sample are registered or active Democrats, 34% are Republicans, and 32% are independents or something else.

In other words, the Monmouth sample is evenly divided between Democrats and Republicans when it comes to registration and past voting behavior. Yet when asked how they see themselves politically, these same voters are 9 points more likely to call themselves Democrats rather than Republicans.

The question you should be asking yourself, in light of events over the past few weeks, is why that might be so.

Tuesday, May 24, 2016

by Ashley MedinaMonmouth University Polling Institute graduate assistantAs it becomes increasingly
likely that the American public is now looking at their two major party
candidates for the 2016 election, pollsters will begin to test the head to head
matchup between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump with more frequency. However, what
many of these pollsters may fail to account for are the number of voters who may
be looking for another option come election day.

A recent NBC News/Survey Monkey poll found 16% of voters nationwide
say they would vote for a generic “3rd party” candidate rather than vote for either Clinton or Trump.
These numbers suggest that a substantial number of U.S. voters may be seeking
another option this November. While the U.S. electorate has expressed similar
sentiments in the past, a single third party candidate has received that large
of a vote share only once before.

In 1992, self-funded Reform
Party candidate Ross Perot won nearly 19% of the total 20% of votes earned by
independent and third party candidates. The next largest showing for a single
independent or 3rd party candidate came in the 1968 presidential
election when American Independent Party candidate George Wallace earned nearly
all 14% of the third-party candidate votes that year. Perot ran again in 1996,
but this time, earned just 8% of the 10% total vote that independent and 3rd
party candidates received. The 1996 election marked just the third time since
1948 that third party and independent candidates combined received at least
double digit support.

If current polling remains
consistent, the third party gains in this upcoming presidential election could reach
double digits. However, there are some caveats facing third party candidates during
this cycle. For one, there will likely be several candidates vying for
independent and third party votes. Additionally, many of them are largely
unknown to most Americans and are likely to remain unknown unless they can make
it to the debate stage. In order to do so, these candidates must appear on
enough state ballots to mathematically earn an Electoral College victory as well as average at least 15% in
national polls. Without the opportunity to participate in presidential debates,
they will struggle to increase their name recognition.

However, only three polls to
date have included individual third party candidates. The first of these, a national
Monmouth University Poll taken in March, found that in a match-up between the two
front runners, Hillary Clinton held a ten point lead over Donald Trump. When Libertarian third party candidate Gary Johnson was
added to the mix, both Clinton's and Trump’s numbers fell as Johnson pulled in 11% of the vote. This
pattern was mirrored in a similar national Public Policy Poll where
Clinton held a 6 point lead
over Trump, but Clinton’s lead shrunk to 4 points
when two third party candidates were added to the mock ballot, with Johnson at 4%
and Green Party candidate Jill Stein at 2%. In a more recent national Fox News Poll,
results were consistent with these third party findings. In this poll, when
respondents were asked to choose first between Clinton and Trump, Trump led Clinton by 3 points, but when given the option of choosing between Clinton,
Trump, and Johnson, Trump’s and Clinton’s vote share dropped 3 points each as Gary
Johnson garnered 10% of the vote.

Given high voter discontent,
it is likely that the third party vote will be higher than average this year,
but we will not know just how high unless other polls include third party
candidates in their surveys. As the rules stand, including these third party
candidates in more polls is necessary if they are to have a chance at
participating in the presidential debates.

The national polling requirements
for third party candidates are rather unrealistic given the fact that a third
party candidate was only once able to
cross the 15% margin in the past 70 years. A look at Wallace’s regional appeal
in 1968 suggests that this requirement may be unfair, as Wallace was able to
earn enough Electoral College votes to impact the final outcome. More recently,
in 2000, it is possible Ralph Nader’s 3% share of the vote was a contributing
factor in that year’s race.

With this in mind, it is
clear that even five percentage points in the polls can reflect the mood and
preferences of significant segments of the U.S. voting base and as such, the
voices of third party supporters should be represented on the presidential
debate stage. It is for this reason that more pollsters should use
methodologically sound ways to include these candidates in their polls.

Thursday, May 19, 2016

Recently,
the political divide within the Republican Party became even more evident when Speaker
of the House Paul Ryan issued a statement expressing that he is “not ready” to endorse Republican frontrunner Donald
Trump. However, the Speaker’s unwillingness
to endorse the billionaire may hurt his own political career as opposed to that
of the presidential candidate.

Trump
and some of his supporters have voiced strong positions concerning the issue of
Ryan’s statement but what does the greater electorate think? Results from a recent (5/6-9) YouGov/Economist Poll cite that two out of three
voters who participated (or plan to participate) in the GOP primaries and
caucuses believe that Ryan should endorse Trump.

Personal
differences aside, Ryan now has to measure how the general Republican base’s
attitudes and allegiances will affect his standing. Keeping in mind the tremendous popular
support the billionaire has been able to cultivate, it may be in Ryan’s best interest
to officially support the candidate if he would like to maintain favor among
the Republican electorate.

As
the political climate stands now, Republican voters are actually more likely to
side with Trump who among all American voters, is viewed favorably by only 30% and unfavorably by 64%. By comparison, Ryan is viewed somewhat more
positively, with 34% of US voters viewing him favorably and 38% unfavorably.

Ryan
may be better liked than Trump among all voters, but among Republicans only, two out of three actually have positive views
of Trump. Should Trump mobilize his
supporters against the Speaker, Ryan is likely to face political ramifications
for his recent statements. This, along
with the fact 49% of GOP voters disapprove of what Ryan has done
as Speaker of the House, may motivate him to
“get ready” sooner rather than later to support the presumptive presidential
nominee.

Wednesday, May 11, 2016

What is up with West Virginia Democrats? Eight years ago, Hillary Clinton
won every single county on the way to a 2-to-1 victory over Barack Obama. This year she lost every single county and
got trounced by Bernie Sanders.

Well, here’s the thing. Many of
those voters aren’t really Democrats at all – at least not by any standards we
would call a Democrat in the rest of the country. While Democrats are still competitive for
statewide office there, West Virginia has been solidly red in presidential
elections for more than a decade.

In fact, the exit poll included two questions about the November
election pitting Donald Trump against either Clinton or Sanders. According to results shown on MSNBC’s primary
night coverage, nearly 3-in-10 of these Democratic primary voters actually said
they will vote for Trump in either match-up.

Let that sink in. Three-in-ten voters
who just cast a ballot in the Democratic primary said they would be voting for
Trump in November regardless of “their” party’s nominee. For the record, most of these Trump
supporters voted for Sanders over Clinton – 60% to 12%, with another 28% of
these mischief-makers voting for one of the largely unknown other names on the
ballot.

These Trump supporters who took part in the Democratic primary are more
likely than others to be from coal mining households (53%), more likely to be
very worried about the nation’s economy (81%), and more likely to want the next
president to be less liberal than Obama (69%).
The latter question has been asked in every exit poll this season and
this is the only place where that many voters in a Democratic primary said they
want to move in a less liberal direction!

These voters are most likely “legacy” Democrat. They belong to the party as it exists in West
Virginia, but they disdain the Democratic brand on the national stage. It’s not that they like Bernie Sanders, but it’s
more likely that they really detest Hillary Clinton. If these voters did not participate in the
presidential primary, we would have likely seen an extremely close margin
between Sanders and Clinton rather than Sanders’s 15 point win.

And this may not be the strangest West Virginia outcome in the past few
cycles. Remember that four years ago, a convicted felon who was incarcerated in
Texas at the time got 41% of the Democratic primary vote against Obama.

So, let’s just mark the West Virginia primary down as one strange
footnote to a very strange primary season.

Wednesday, May 4, 2016

The Cruz campaign’s attempt to coalesce the #NeverTrump
movement around their candidate #NeverHappened.
In hindsight, the attempt to position him as the establishment
alternative may not have been the wisest move.

Ted Cruz entered the 2016 presidential race with a reputation
as the Senate Republican conference’s enfant
terrible. He ended his campaign as
the establishment’s last hope to deny Donald Trump the party’s nomination. The problem is that GOP voters’ desire for a political
outsider intensified just as he was making this pivot.

Exit polls conducted by the national media’s National
Election Pool asked voters in 24 different contests this year whether the next president should
have experience in politics or be from outside the political establishment.

In the first four contests held in February, Republican
voters were divided – 49 percent wanted an outsider while 45 percent favored
someone with political experience. The preference
for an insider fell off in early March’s Super Tuesday primaries – with 49
percent still wanting an outsider but only 41 percent looking for political experience.

By the mid-March primaries, a 52 percent majority of GOP voters preferred a
political outsider compared to 41 percent who still wanted an experienced
politician. The gap widened in the April contests,
with nearly 6-in-10 Republicans (59 percent) wanting an outsider and just 37
percent favoring an insider. In
yesterday’s Indiana primary, the results for this question stood at 59 percent outsider
and 35 percent insider.

The Cruz recasting gambit worked to the extent that he was ultimately seen
as the establishment candidate – 68 percent of Indiana Republicans who want an
insider voted for him. In the very first contest of 2016 – the Iowa caucuses – Marco Rubio was actually the preferred candidate of voters wanting someone with political experience, even though Cruz was the overall winner on the night.

However, Donald Trump
has been the favored choice of GOP voters looking for a true outsider since the very beginning of the primary season. He won
46 percent of this group’s vote in Iowa, culminating with a 78
percent showing in Indiana three months later.

“In retrospect, Cruz's pivot to
being the face of the establishment was a mistake. Cruz ceded the
outsider mantle to Trump at the very same time the Republican base's desire
for an outsider grew,” said Patrick Murray, director of the independent
Monmouth University Polling Institute.

Wednesday, March 2, 2016

To say the 2016 primary season has been surprising would be
an understatement. A presumed Democratic
nominee who was supposed to coast to victory has faced a tough challenge. The GOP race is now coalescing around a front
runner who practically everyone would have laughed off less than a year ago.

This topsy-turvy situation has amplified the already significant
challenges that pollsters face when trying to take the pulse of voters in
presidential primaries and caucuses. Super
Tuesday presented the first large-scale polling test of the nomination contest. Interestingly, only a few national polling
organizations devoted significant resources to polling these races (more on
that below).

Monmouth University conducted polls in four of the nine
primary states in the weeks leading up to Super Tuesday – Alabama, Oklahoma,
Texas, and Virginia. We had a significant
miss in the Oklahoma Republican primary where, like every other poll in the
state, we forecast a Donald Trump victory when Ted Cruz was the actual winner. On the other hand, Monmouth was the only poll
to accurately forecast a Bernie Sanders victory in the Democratic contest in
that very same state. Monmouth’s forecasts
were accurate in the other three states we polled.

Monmouth’s Democratic primary polls were closest – or second
closest in the case of Texas – to the actual margin of victory of all the polls
taken in those four states over the past month.
Our Democratic primary results compared to the actual margin of victory:

TX : Vote -
Clinton +32 / Monmouth Poll - Clinton +34

AL : Vote - Clinton +59 / Monmouth
Poll - Clinton +48

VA : Vote - Clinton +29 / Monmouth
Poll - Clinton +27

OK : Vote - Sanders +10 / Monmouth
Poll - Sanders +5

On the GOP side, Monmouth came closest to the actual margin
of victory in Texas and Alabama:

TX : Vote -
Cruz +17 / Monmouth Poll - Cruz +15

AL: Vote -
Trump +22 / Monmouth Poll - Trump +23

Monmouth had the correct winner in the Virginia GOP primary,
but the margin was tighter than our poll:
Vote - Trump +3 / Monmouth Poll - Trump +14. It’s worth noting that our Virginia poll was
conducted a week prior to Super Tuesday, specifically before the crucial debate
when Rubio decided to take on Trump. That performance appeared to help
Rubio’s performance in Virginia, although not enough to change the overall
outcome.

As mentioned, we had the wrong winner in Oklahoma GOP
primary: Vote - Cruz +6 / Monmouth Poll - Trump +12. Every poll in Oklahoma had Trump ahead by a significant
margin. Examining all the state exit polls from Super Tuesday shows that
Oklahoma actually had the highest number of Republican voters (33%) who said
they made up their mind in the last few days.
These voters broke significantly for Cruz (37%) and Rubio (38%) over
Trump (15%).

Despite the stakes involved in Tuesday’s races, only four
national polling organizations polled in at least three of the nine primary
states during the month of February. In
addition to Monmouth, CBS/YouGov and NBC/Wall Street Journal/Marist polled in
three states and PPP conducted Democratic-only primary polls in all nine
states.

In Texas, the one state where all four organizations polled
the Democratic primary, Monmouth’s 32 point margin for Hillary Clinton was the
closest to the actual result. CBS/YouGov
had the margin at 24 points, PPP had 23 points, and NBC/Wall Street
Journal/Marist had 21 points. In the
Texas Republican primary, Monmouth’s 15 point margin for Cruz was also closer
to the actual result. NBC/Wall Street
Journal had a 13 point margin and CBS/YouGov had an 11 point margin.

This primary season has been particularly tough to poll, so
it is understandable why more national polling operations did not dip their
toes in the water. Despite the one
missed call, Monmouth is pleased with its Super Tuesday polling results.

Monday, February 8, 2016

The final Monmouth University Poll in New Hampshire found
Donald Trump with a sizable lead over his competition in the Republican race,
while Bernie Sanders held a ten point lead over Hillary Clinton in the
Democratic contest.

The big question on the GOP side is who will come in second
place, with at least four candidates realistically vying for the spot. On the Democratic side, the question is
whether Clinton can reduce her deficit to the single digits.

In the retail-heavy political environment of New Hampshire,
it may all come down to the ground game – how many voters can each campaign personally
contact. Monmouth asked its poll
respondents whether they had been contacted, and if so, on behalf of whom.

Interestingly, since registered independents can – and do –
vote in either party’s primary, a significant number of likely voters in each
contest say they were contacted by both Republican and Democratic
campaigns. The numbers below give a
relative sense of how intense that outreach has been – and which candidates are
excelling in their field operations.

Candidates are listed in rank order of total voter contacts,
assuming about the same number of voters will turn out in each party’s primary. The first number in parenthesis is the
percentage of likely Republican voters who report being contacted by someone
promoting that candidate. The second
number is the percentage of likely Democratic voters who say the same.

I am Patrick Murray, director of the Monmouth University
Polling Institute. Although I have been
known, from time to time, to comment on the efficacy and responsiveness of the
internal workings of state government in New Jersey, I rarely take a public position
on a piece of legislation. When I do it
is largely because the process by which the legislation was drawn up does not
adhere to principles of good government.

It is for this reason that I appear before you today to
express my strong opposition to SCR 188.

This proposed Constitutional amendment will not achieve its
stated aim of designing a fair legislative map with at least ten competitive
districts.

Furthermore, the wording of the ballot question and
interpretive statement seems to be deliberately designed to fool New Jersey
voters into supporting a Constitutional change against their own interests.

First, let me say that I endorse the provisions that call
for the immediate appointment of the public member or the Apportionment
Commission and that codify a public access process while still giving the
commission the flexibility for negotiating in private. I also agree with the wisdom of granting
legislative leaders the power to appoint commission members in return for
barring current legislators from serving on the commission.

However, I must object to the entire amendment because of the
language in paragraphs 2.c. and especially 2.d.

Let me start with the “fair representation” provision in
paragraph 2.c. According to the Judiciary
Committee statement, this provision utilizes the standards established by Dr.
Donald Stokes, who served as the commission’s public member in both 1981 and
1991.

On close examination, it does not.

Stokes’s fairness doctrine states that the number of seats a
party holds in the legislature after each election should correlate to its
share of the vote in that election. For
example, if the statewide vote splits 50-50 split between the Democratic and
Republican candidates for office, then the share of legislative seats should be
evenly divided. However, according to
projections Stokes included in his 1993 monograph, if a party wins 60 percent
of the vote, it would be reasonable to see that party take as many as 75
percent of the seats.

Fair enough, but Stokes’s fairness test must to be applied
to the map as a whole after the fact.
You cannot a priori set aside
30 evenly-divided safe districts and then work on 10 so-called competitive
districts and guarantee that you will come up with a fair correlation of seats
to the statewide vote share.

More importantly, though, the crucial metric used by Stokes
is whether seats in the legislature correlate to the total vote for the legislature. Not how those seats correlate to the vote for
a variety of unrelated offices such as President, Governor, or U.S. Senate as
set forth in that paragraph.

This linkage is truly bizarre. As we know, voters use a different set of
criteria when evaluating who to support in elections for federal offices versus
state offices as well as for executive positions versus legislative ones.

If gubernatorial elections
told us what type of representation New Jersey voters want in their
legislature, I would be directing my remarks today to the Republican Chairman
of this committee. By the same token, if
presidential elections told us what New Jersey voters want in a legislature,
there would be only one Republican sitting on this committee today.

However, even if Stokes’s fairness doctrine was applied correctly,
it would still be unfair in practice. In
determining the legislative vote share of the two parties, Stokes did not
employ a straight tally of the statewide vote, but used a district-based vote
share average. In other words, instead
of using millions of data points – i.e. individual votes – to determine the New
Jersey electorate’s intent, Stokes used only 40 data points – the two-party
percentage margin in each district.

Stokes claimed that, due to widely varying voter
registration and turnout rates in each district, this formula would be more
representative of the will of all constituents – assuming that non-voters have
the same preferences as those who actually showed up to vote.

This may be true in theory, but it is not supported by the
data. I examined election results from
the past five legislative cycles – which is exactly what Stokes would do. I found 19 instances where one party or the
other did not field a full slate of candidates for either the Senate or the
Assembly, which represents a not insignificant 6 percent of all races during
that period. Moreover, 14 of those 19
cases – or nearly three-quarters of these uncontested races – were instances
where the Republican Party did not field a full slate. That means that 14 of the data points used in
the Stokes fairness test would produce a result at or near a 100 percent vote
share for the Democrats compared to only 5 data points that would produce the
same result for Republicans.

This would falsely skew the overall vote share result toward
the Democrats, unless you actually believe that there were no minority party
voters living in any of those 19 uncontested districts.

On the one hand, using non-legislative elections to
determine the legislative maps fairness relies on a false metric. But using the legislative election results as
Stokes would have done would produce a skewed metric.

Even if the proposed formula did not face these problems,
trying to codify this fairness doctrine in Constitutional language is akin to
making the ghost of Donald Stokes the commission’s public member in perpetuity. This is simply not something that should be
written into the Constitution.

In
fact, recent changes to Ohio’s legislative redistricting process which were
approved by voters there last year, includes a fairness provision that provides
sufficient leeway for the members of their commission. It says simply that: “the statewide proportion of districts whose voters, based on
[…] election results during the last ten years, favor each political party
shall correspond closely to the statewide preferences of the voters.”

While, the full provision does
use what I believe to be a false metric by including non-legislative elections,
the language is broad enough that it allows for each decennial commission to
negotiate its meaning while incorporating emerging standards, such as the
principle of “communities of interest” which has been largely ignored in New
Jersey’s process.

More
importantly, the Ohio standard also states quite clearly, and I quote, “[n]o general assembly district plan
shall be drawn primarily to favor or disfavor a political party.”

And it is on this standard that
SCR 188 fails miserably.

Because this resolution was
introduced less than four weeks ago, I have not had the same opportunity to run
vote simulations on potential outcomes, as I am sure its supporters have been
doing for the past few years. However, I
have been crunching numbers in New Jersey for long enough to know when
something smells fishy.

The process in paragraph 2.d.
claims to create competitive districts, but actually entrenches a permanent
Democratic majority by using a tortured definition of the word “competitive.”

In reality, competitive
districts drawn using this provision in the 2021 process would almost certainly
range from a smaller but definite Democratic advantage to an absolutely solid
Democratic advantage.

While this outcome might be in
line with the fairness doctrine, it defies any common sense meaning of the word
“competitive.”

For most voters, the word
“competitive” means that either party has a decent shot of winning the
seat. It does not mean that one party
simply won’t lose as badly in a certain district as it will elsewhere in the
state.

Over the past two decades, I
have had the privilege of hearing the opinions of hundreds of thousands of New
Jerseyans. And I can say with certainty that
our state’s residents want a truly competitive legislative map. Indeed, you need to look no further than
election returns which consistently show that competitive elections produce
higher turnout.

So I am left to wonder why the
drafters of this resolution would use the word “competitive” to describe an
outcome that is not competitive according to voters’ vernacular?

I am left with only one
conclusion. This is a bald-faced attempt
to pull the wool over voters’ eyes; making them complicit in a process that
will only serve to increase their cynicism about politics.

Anyone
reading the ballot question and interpretive statement about creating
competitive districts would come away with a far different interpretation of
what that means than what the proposed Constitutional language will actually
produce.

I fully endorse revisiting how our Legislative Redistricting
Commission operates. But if a fuller
process for public input is a good idea for the commission, then it should also
be a good idea for the legislative process by which these constitutional
changes are proposed.